NEWBODY “EMOTIONAL” 12″ (HOS004)

LA/Detroit two-steppers Newbody (aka Roberto Ramone and Jonathan Roshad) keep the faith on their latest single. “Emotional” and the flip “Wut U Do” share the duo’s brisk vocal house signature: cooled garage energy, uptown piano, bass calisthenics, satin shirt soul. The remixes flex different tendons of the tracks: Emotion II Emotion pumps a Jack City vibe, piano stabs and discotheque horns over a lewd bounce, while Cromie & Sage Caswell go more stereoscopic, dizzying up an abstract sunrise awakening. Also includes a radio edit of “Emotional,” to bait the Top 40 DJs on the fence. Mastered by Mark Pistel. Center label design by Trevor Tarczynski.

SIR STEPHEN “SANCTUARY” 12″ (HOS002)

French Quarter diva-house decadent Sir Stephen explores fresh palatial terrace party terrain on Sanctuary, a six-song rosary for SILK streetwear subsidiary House Of Silk. Seemingly inspired by that short-lived (and culturally off-limits) stylistic intersection of 90′s club music and devotional New Age – think early Enigma, deep house PM Dawn white labels, wind chime samples, etc – the EP glides between moods of self-reflection and celebration, often in the same track. Vocals rise through synth-swells of incense and candlelight, tag-teaming with sub-currents of tribal percussion, trumpet, sax, software warble, piano stabs, and acid-jazz flute. An absorbing and sensual resurrection collection by New Orleans’ foremost dancefloor defibrillator. Hand-stamped white label 12 inches mastered by Marshall Jefferson in Chicago, IL.

EZLV/ROMY “HOME” 12″ (HOS001)

French-Canadian dirty-disco duo EZLV kick off SILK’s new imprint, House Of Silk, with four fresh & carefree club classix led by “Home,” the lush uptown house anthem by Melbourne vocalist/MC/boheme Romy Hoffman. The rest of the EP spans funked-out nu-groove edits of prized Salsoul sides, a “Home” deelite-dub by EZLV, plus an androgynous slow-pitched re-imagining of the hard house heartbreaker “It’s Over Now.” Quebecois culture’s finest body-rocking export of late, crafted expressly 2 B N-Joyed. For fans of letting loose. Black vinyl 45 RPM 12 inches mastered by A.P. In hand-stamped and stickered sleeves.

COSBY “MIRROR BOX” CS (SILK078)

East Coast audio curator Will Creason’s recording alias inevitably exudes a darker resonance in light of recent events, but coincidentally so does his latest sheaf of Cosby cuts, Mirror Box. Inspired by an amalgam of “real and imagined locations” ranging from the Strip District to Surfers Paradise, the album’s six songs stalk starker and steelier circuits than his previous work, from the glassy, paranoid dub of “Mirror Box” to the hollow powder rush of “Gold Coast” to the twitchy trio of bleakly jacking EBM B Side tracks. Each piece is a spiraling ice-slide further inside its own event horizon, cyclical and relentless. Play loud and late. Mastered by Alter Echo. Edition of 100.

POLICY “THE REPUBLIC” CS (SILK077)

Last summer Francis Hsueh (aka Policy) revisited his childhood neighborhood in Taipei, where his parents settled briefly after fleeing China when the communists seized power in 1949. Despite its legacy of displacement and diaspora, he felt a communion by riding the city’s MRT train through hazily remembered suburbs and landscapes: “The sounds of urban life, of people going someplace, made sense no matter who or where I was.” This “steady thump of movement” led to the creation of The Republic, an essentially unbroken 50-minute piece of music, with each section named after stations along Taipei’s subway. Opening with the airy chords of “Shipai,” the album curves through expanses of phased percussion, melancholic organ (“Jiantan”), post-punk basslines, cryptic voice samples (“NTU Hospital”), street ambience, syncopated bells (“Daan Park”), and beyond. But the rhythm never brakes, riding the rails through and past each new cosmopolitan borough, structures ghosting away in the dusk. A captivating sight-see of sinuous, autobiographical house. Mastered by Alter Echo. Edition of 100.

POTIONS “PHASED” CS (SILK076)

Chicago’s Potions (aka Tom Owens) oozes a suitably liquid sub-species of electronic rhythm miasma, which he’s been bottling on boutique cassette reels since 2011, exploring various vibes and viscosities. Phased collects seven of his latest and most luxuriantly languid lava lamp concoctions for what, to our ears, may be his supreme setlist to date. Recorded primarily using “MIDI technology of decades past” (not for nothing was his debut LP called MIDI Jazz Bass), the album slips and slides through jittery cyborg jazz, disjointed lounge-fusion, siphoned acid, and dubby, dissolved house, a bubbling beaker of fluid synthetic textures. The off-kilter percussion programming gives each piece a pleasingly unstable voltage, skewing the equilibrium in whooshes of phaser and stereo rainstick. Fellow ambient sculptress Laura Jane Friedman guests with some gorgeously reflective multi-tracked vox on “Glass Lake,” but otherwise this is an instrumental affair. Mastered by Alter Echo. Edition of 100.

THE CYCLIST “HOT HOUSE” CS (SILK074)

Andrew Morrison’s grasp of static-hazed grit as a Cyclist production signature continues to grow more grisly and majestic. On Hot House he pushes beyond tape throb into widescreen steel-wool jack, cooled with fifth-generation hiss and electric new age. Side A is all singles: heady bass, blasted dub, and phasing, echoed keys. But the reverse three lurk outside the club, blanker synthesizing, droned rhythm spirals, desperation on the streets. It’s not afraid to be epic too; 9-minute EP closer, “Higher Volumes,” is a saga of opaque tape emotion, samples, synthetic rain, and deep house. Another impressive structure from an artist miles from peaking. Pro-dubbed cassettes in label J-cards. Edition of 100. Vinyl and digital edition available worldwide via music/is/for/losers.

LUNATE “FAR SHORES” CS (SILK071)

Bogota believer Manuel Cortes conjures a spare schematic of autobiographical street house. Tracks emerge from experiences and lived insights into lean rhythm assemblages bouncing through zones of bass, acid, ballroom, warrior funk, tripped-hop: Lunate. Like the narcotic medication his alias echoes, Far Shoresshivers with a blurry pulse through wavering doses of nocturnal lament. “The Liminal,” “Cold City,” “Molt” – identities unravel in the numbing metropolis, chiming keys flashing like digital clocks in glass mansions. His vacancies are deep; “Pawn Shop Romance” sparkles on a cheap streetcorner runway groove but is about “people who make choices where they sell out true happiness for comfort and wealth.” Across 8 tracks Lunate leaves a loose-limbed trail of late nite truths and dancefloor introspections, molting into new percussion-and-sample symbioses. Recorded in Turkey, Colombia, and beyond across the last year, and mastered by Alter Echo. Edition of 100.

LUCA LOZANO “ISOLATION DISTORTS” CS (SILK070)

Berlin-based label impresario and shapeshifting selector Luca Lozano has sounded a lot of ways over his seven odd 12 inches (for his own Klasse Recordings, plus Optimo, Morris/Audio, etc), but Isolation Distortsspawns from the sensation of solitude warping reality, and the results may be his most skewed and striking to date. Wheezing sci-fi samples ebb into martian techno expanses; quiet organ melodies lilt under lunar acid; dead-end synth-pop burrows into creeped craters of dust. Lozano’s pacing emphasis patience, loops and melodies hung across long alien canyons, pivoting from one tranced conspiracy passage to another. The collection brightens toward the end, planetary shadow receding into a jazzed breakbeat sunrise (“Lifting Forward”), which then cuts loose via space station 303 boogie (“The Fox”). Overall, an oxygen-drunk six-pack of general utility astro-house by a man with a plan. Mastered by Josh “Alter Echo” Derry. Edition of 100.

PRISON GARDE “OCCULTSYSTEM” CS (SILK068)

Montreal barber Robert Squire has a lengthy music biz CV as hip-hop producer, remixer, label boss, DJ, graphic designer, and beyond, but the past few years have seen him zeroing in more exclusively on his revolving door hardware operation, Prison Garde, with rawer and more ruthless results. Occultsystemgathers ten of his starkest grey-scale technoid skeletons into a tense suite of paranoiac electronics and faded 5 AM cruises down desolate service roads. Entirely improvised using a TR909, Moog Minitaur, Juno-60, Tetra synthesizer, 3630 Compressor, some pedals, and a mixing desk, Squire’s tracks strip rhythms to the bone, leaving them to shiver in a shadow of echo and bass gloom. Close associates like Ango, Ace Decade, and Kevin Eames contribute as well, co-scheming percussion blueprints, modulating FX, and whatever else gets deemed crucial to the particular Prison Garde industrial complex at hand. A bleary, brooding, but banging decagon of jammed signals, hunkered youth, and concrete tunnel visions, decrepit grain elevators flashing past in the window.

VERTICAL67 “AURA” 12″ (SILK067)

Berlin sequencer Thomas Pahl aka Vertical67 pitches his latest sheaf of sim city nostalgia acid away from the lovers lanes of his last SILK sides, Soulmates, towards a new nocturnal dome. Faded neon, concave rubber basslines, fluorescent synths, and Roland rhythm patterns interweave across expanses of spheric interior space – an Aurapervades. The EP’s 5 pieces patrol different perimeters, evoking various shades of windswept, moon-burned, ecstatic, restless states of mind. Pahl’s interests in electronic textures spill over into his ambient work as The Coloured Chaos, a fixation with fluidity, weightlessness, lasers fluttering between microchips, an android’s haunted thoughts. Interface and inter-place. Features a remix of zero gravity poolside theme “Invisible Presence” by Octo Octa. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

STRATEGY “BOXOLOGY” CS (SILK066)

The breadth of bass and rhythm imagineerings devised weekly by Portland machinist Paul Dickow is as invigorating as it is overwhelming – some cups run dry and some flow forever apparently. More than a decade in and Strategy’s strategies only continue to pinwheel and proliferate, as showcased on his latest capsule collection, Boxology, which swirls through slinky sunrise house (“Panorama,” “The Mink”), acid-splashed funktronix (“The Works,” “Drag It Through The Garden”), jazzy Detroit shuffles (“A Secret,” “Planet Of Jazz”), and airy dancefloor escalators (“Tomorrow May Never Come”). Throughout, Dickow wields a light touch, allowing each concoction to fizz, flex, and ferment before queuing up the next hardware pattern or pitch-bent synth hook. The fact that the bulk of these pieces were road-tested at west coast parties over the last couple years helps explain their fluidity and sneaky footloose agenda. Also worth mentioning/praising: for a dude this deep in the game this is some seriously un-cynical music. Who else writes Chi-house jams about their hot dog condiment preferences? NOT ENOUGH. Mastered by Josh “Alter Echo” Derry.

POLICY “POSTSCRIPT” LP (SILK065)

Manhattan filmmaker-turned-beatbroker Francis Hsueh aka Policy has been unfolding a skewed yet chic house blueprint across the last three years, as evinced via a series of EPs for eminent dancefloor wholesalers such as Rush Hour and Argot – yet his latest seems his most assured and distilled to date. Postscriptplays street dice with choppy electronics and disrobed rhythm architectures, maxed out but close to the chest, splashed with off-grid percussive patterns and muted jazz textures. Policy’s policy of artisanal layering has never been more elegantly executed; metropolis gems like “Postscript 187,” “Ghost In The Groove,” and “Big Beast Anthem,” swing and stutter, brisk and bouncy, graffitied with smoke-lounge keys, soft pad dub-stabs, synth-flute streaks, burnished brass, city grit. A uniquely contemplative take on funky uptown house by one of NYC’s rising talents. Cover photograph by Francis Hsueh. Mastered by Dietrich Schoenemann at Complete Mastering.

TEMPLES “EARRINGS II” 12″ (SILK063)

Portlandia house bastion Ecstasy termed Temples’ 2012 debut mini-LP, I-VII, “ambient jack,” which captures something of the project’s contradictory strengths: airy yet agile, sparse but plush, flights of intuition mapped onto morphing grids of percussion, crystalline electronics, and pastel skylines. Avalon Kalin’s latest collection of tech finery, Earrings II, dials back the atmospheric quotient somewhat, though there’s still a rock garden spaciousness to his mixes, each element arranged with regard to some higher harmony, the poetry of negative space. Recorded in his home studio “while dancing,” the four tracks here ebb between passages of pressure and release, euphoric but unstable, dusted with pyramid-chamber slap back and live dubbing acrobatics. Their melting clock asymmetries more closely echo Kalin’s hardware improvisations with Scott Goodwin as Polonaise than the velvet vocal house of his other solo vessel, Finesse, but Temples is ultimately a holy place all its own. A sleekly compelling statement from one of the Pacific Northwest’s secret weapons. Mastered by Eric Hanson.

OCTO OCTA “CAUSE I LOVE YOU” 12″ (SILK061)

New England deep house patriot Octo Octa logged some real miles in 2013, flexing his live muscles, refining his crowd vibe antennae, and tracking a trio of fresh EPs to kick off the new year. Cause I Love Youis the first – to be followed by 12′s for Skylax and Argot – and it’s a real shot to the heart. “Cause I Love You” jacks out of the gate, a jubilant drag race of tumbling percussion, intestinal bass, and slipstreaming vocal samples. It’s not all so raring though. Live staple “So Lux” lives up to the title, a creamy, serene slice of stereo software, while “Give” (featuring Raw Moans) coasts on a mesmerizing melody loop, filtered, flowing, and low to the ground. Closer “Mine (Second Chance Mix)” is classic Octo: lens-flared, high-stepping, turned on, turned loose. Though more of a variety pack than a linearly themed collection, these four cuts show a craftsman hot in the pocket, still picking up steam, alive with ideas. Mastered by Dietrich Schoenemann. In sand-dune fantasia SILK sleeve designed by Luke Brown/Les Level.

MAGIC TOUCH “PALERMO HOUSE GANG” CD/2×12″ (SILK060)

After three thick years of performances, passport abuse, and pumping, pleasure-principle EPs, Damon Palermo aka classic house torchbearer Magic Touch presents his pinnacle statement to date: Palermo House Gang. Joining forces with a vast cast of collaborators sourced from his intercontinental travels – Octo Octa, Newbody, Benny Badge, The Horses, Sarah Bates, Sorcerer, Ash Williams – the album’s eight cuts swing and sweat through funky new wave club mixes, freestyle R&B, mesh-top house, freeform hardware workouts, and decadent disco, a sprawling celebration of communal motion and dancefloor idealism. Sustained heavy touring often grizzles some musicians into cynical survivalists but it seems to have had the opposite effect on Palermo – these are his most generous, playful, and sensual tracks to date. Let go, lighten up, join the Gang. Mastered by Dietrich Schoenemann. Krazy cat artwork by San Fran cartoonist Primo Pitino.

BEAT DETECTIVES “MUSIC 2″ CS (SILK059)

Anarchic trash-techno trios from Minneapolis aren’t typically a plentiful commodity in our experience, especially ones as freewheeling and funked up as Beat Detectives. Comprised of visual artist Aaron Anderson, Chris Hontos (also of Food Pyramid and Dreamweapon), and the multi-talented Oakley Tapola, the group got their start playing a heavily smeared form of rudimentary dance music at “dirt raves in punker basements” around the Twin Cities before Anderson relocated to NYC. Music 2 is the perfect sophomore stepping stone slab, following their Casual Encounters Of The Third Kinddebut collection on Moon Glyph earlier this year. Woozy house mutations and pitch-shifted party-acid experiments congeal and dissolve around Tapioca’s delirious, deadpan vocals (she manages to make lyrics like “American flag / with weed leaves / replacing the stars” sound strange and deranged instead of silly), interspersed with dizzy dub grooves and displaced electro-jack. Reminiscent in places of those weird deep cuts on certain late 80′s Warrior Records acid comps, before the style got codified and normalized. Regenerative club mutagen for a world with a stick up its ass. Recorded in Minneapolis and Brooklyn, 2012-2013, and mastered by Cole Weiland.

FAST TIMES “BODYTALK” CS (SILK058)

Brooklynite Jorge Day’s musical CV includes synth duties in Wierd Records mope-pop act Plastic Flowers as well as production for sultry neo-wavers Lingerie, but when left to his own devices he crafts gritty skeletal house sketches under the Fast Times flag. Bodytalk is his debut after a year of workshopping demos and touring Europe, and the results caress a spectrum of SILK sweet-spots: reverbed runway themes (“Mon Petit”), warehouse memory tapes (“Ephemera”), dirty drum machinery (“Eternity Is Past”), naked soul samples (“Toxic City”), luxe lo-fi hypnosis (“Male Polish,” “Midnight Vamp”), etc. There’s a starkness and crunch to these tracks that skews them more towards the proto-house vibe of various mid-80′s analog sides, when productions were more about raw rhythms and melodic minimalism, instead of the prolonged tension-and-release model which dominates to this day. History aside, Fast Times makes background boombox gold, ripe for cranking loud and cutting loose. Expect more from this transporter in the near future. Mastered by Brian Pyle.

CHERUSHII “QUEEN OF CUPS” 12″ (SILK056)

Bay Area hardware native Chelsea Faith’s debut as Cherushii – a name she’s been recording under informally since her first teenage techno Tascam experiments more than a decade ago – spills over with loves and lessons gleaned from her lifer voyage through the city’s thriving rave underworlds. Though she trained as a classical pianist at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music the rigidity of the culture disillusioned her, so she dove headfirst into the Bay’s electronic warehouse scene, both as a promoter and as a performer. For her 19th birthday she received a Yamaha RS7000 sequencer, thus birthing an obsession with live PA sets, which she’s never deviated from. Recorded mostly in SF (with the exception of one track cut in Berlin), and mixed by Matthew Zipkin, Queen Of Cupstakes the expansive blueprint of slow-burn deep house but threads it through with waves of synth wash, acid flash, and simmering strobe glow, for a loose yet composed suite of 21st-century free-spirit pulse generation. Mastered by Eric Hanson. In new SILK label sleeves designed by Bobby Houlihan.

JAMES BOOTH “REUNION” CS (SILK053)

Memory-taper James Booth trickled through his teen years in Manchester tracking melancholia house shadows and overcast bedroom bangers on a home-rigged dictaphone/Tascam arrangement, and though he’s since upgraded his studio assemblage the essential agenda remains unchanged. Reunionis his debut, documenting ten of his choicest Northern isolation reveries, a Polaroid-hued tube-ride-turned-rhythm-odyssey through 150 shades of grey, from the nocturnal ice-house jazz of “End Tipsy” to the foggy, 5 AM club deja vu, “Seeing Voices.” An alternately hushed and hypnotized journey to the end of the night, in search of pleasures known and unknown. Again, please. Pro-dubbed, hand-numbered tapes in full-color SILK label J-cards.

COSBY “HANDS TOGETHER” CS (SILK052)

American bass lifer Will Creason aka Cosby has a storied history in various electronic micro-scenes, with hands in an an array of labels and modes, but he first cropped up on our radar back in early ’11 with his “Sangria” demo, an entrancing anthem of sultry, Sound Stream-y nu groove magic that we immediately burned and spun out in several time zones. Inspired equally by NY garage and Baltimore club music, he patiently pieced together the rest of his SILK debut EP from sessions in Seattle and D.C. and the results reveal a colorful cutaway of classic club energies: dubbed vocal workouts, confused house, funky footloose FX, jacking party acid, woozy filtered disco edits, etc. Hands Togethercasts a wide net and is all the better for it, dragging up a fun, freaky mishmash of time-warped dance forms from the bottom of the body-music world-brain. Pro-dubbed and hand-numbered.

ROLAND TINGS “LIVE IN THORNBURY” CS (SILK051)

Australia friends always tell us what a slayer SILK house-smelter Roland Tings aka Rohan Newman is in the live setting, as we’ve never had the pleasure yet ourself. Finally someone sent us proof: this cool, ripping, well-recorded recent warehouse set of his. Stitches in some choice trax from his Milky Way12″ as well as a slew of inspired unreleased jams.

ALEX BURKAT “TAROT” 12″ (SILK050)

Brooklyn public figure Alex Burkat’s SILK debut owns a mood all its own: patient, swelling loops of new age club mist give way to classic Chicago figure-8 bass patterns, punctuated by dubby, sampled drum fills, before billowing back out into breathy warehouse atmospherics. His recent EP for Mister Saturday Night explored more upbeat-oriented dynamics but Tarotunwinds with a dreamier deja vu, waves of arpeggiatted echoes, strobing stereo shimmer, and low acid warble arcing over a limitless subterranean dance floor. Hypnotic humanist mantric mystery music for the 21st century, for those invested in what the deck has to hold. Mastered in Los Angeles by Eric Hanson.

POLYSICK “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” 12″ (SILK049)

Roman hyperrealist Polysick is one the most inspirationally omnivorous electronic futurists in the biz right now. From the miasmic sci-fi terrariums of his 2012 opus Digital Native to his scrambled alien radio hijack tape Flow FM to his recent new age metropolis techno-fantasy Daydream, he traverses every sphere with a masterfully warped, expansive, and maximalist touch. Under Construction finds him fracking into fresh dancefloor terrains: breezy rooftop acid stretched into animal balloons, degenerated house dubs refracted through 80′s video arcade ambience, jazzy champagne-spritzed 303-dosed loft funk, screwed Barry White samples echoing across the chill out lounge, etc. Four instant time-travel crate-dug classics by one of today’s most clued-in constructionists.

JUPITER JAX “CITY LIFE ’88″ CS (SILK048)

City Life ‘88 is the hypno-melancholic synth-fantasia of Maltese producer Rudi Agius aka Jupiter Jax, a daytime computational biologist and nighttime sensational keyboardologist, coding and de-coding his way through dancefloor cosmoses. In his teen years he began throwing underground parties in Malta, flying in artists from the Crème/Bunker/Clone set, revivifying the mezmer-magic of early Chicago house and obscure Italo-Disco. His compositions are omni-influenced, conjuring nocturnal neon cities of the mind.

OCTO OCTA “BETWEEN TWO SELVES” 2xLP/CD (SILK046)

Sophistication and elegance have not always been the strobelight honey of many dancefloor pursuits but it’s been Octo Octa’s strongest suit since his 2011 SILK debut, and here again are those core moods of displaced identity and intimacy giving way to an adrift, uneasy feeling. Between Two Selves has a facile sensuality – the reclining nude of Octo’s Blue Period – with more room to breathe and sigh anthemic samplics (“I don’t want you to go,” “All his kisses taste sweet”). There’s fewer elements in the mix but more space to explore them, pitched down and out across abstracted, extended compositions. A deep accomplishment of regal soul and melancholy. Sleeve design by Amanda Brown.

PHARAOHS “REPLICANT MOODS” CD/LP (SILK045)

L.A.’s best live band finally delivers a full-length after some scattered EPs and it totally jacks into the dizzy party-acid gang-groove they summon so effortlessly month after month at the city’s various far-flung afterhours warehouses. All the strobed classics are here: the 303 soul-shakedown “Everything,” nu-groove neighborhood funk-out “Syzygy,” island-synth escape pod “F&M Suite,” and sweaty set-closer, “Above/Below.” Even Miss Maria Minerva pays a visit, on the club-dub single, “Miraculous Feet.” Mastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic. Incan temple sleeve design by Cedric Hervet.

COYOTE CLEAN UP “2 HOT 2 WAIT” CD/LP (SILK044)

Detroit’s secret weapon caps a string of deceptively excellent digital and tape collections with his vinyl (and CD) debut and it’s everything it should be. His bedroom blizzard production style shimmers here in a rare and mysterious way, like wandering graffiti’d city streets in a snowstorm: icy reverbed beats ride the rails, cascading synth freeze, sampled vocals fogging like breath. Includes dream-grime mixtape classics like “The Least U Could Feel” and “Awesome Luv.” 2 True 2 Believe. In pointillist posterior artwork designed by Bobby Houlihan.

BOBBY BROWSER “STILL BROWSING” 12″ (SILK043)

San Fran smiley face Andre Ferreira lives and breathes analog acid/house/jack in a way few other heads can, and his tracks from the Bobby Browser bouncy castle are invariably the choicest cuts from the lifelong mastermix DJing through his brain. Following patiently on the heels of last year’s OOP Just Browsing 12″ comes this new fresh new 4-track EP, Still Browsing (the 3rd piece of the trilogy is rumored to be called Just Hurry Up And Fucking Buy Something Already). In May Señor Browser will be cruising down under on a 100% Silk Australia tour alongside Magic Touch and Octo Octa; get warmed up.

LEECH “TUSKS” 12″ (SILK040)

Multi-scene main man and Kranky konfidante Brian Foote bounced from Chicago to Portland to L.A. before birthing Leech, his diagonal dub endeavor. Foote has helmed the mixing board and production duties for scores of innerspace artists, from Zola Jesus to LA Vampires to Grouper and beyond, but as Leech he masterminds a hybridized mode occasionally termed Chrono Dance, a non-time all-at-once synthesis of hardware rhythms, siphoned techno, and double-helix structures. Funked and freaked, rich and rare-brained.

EZLV “SELFISH BEAT” 12″ (SILK037)

EZLV are like SoundStream in song form, luscious and light, soul-sampled, elegant acts of DJ creationism. Selfish Beatsparkles, shimmers, allures, uplifts, indulging in the beauty of nighttime exhibitionism and extravagance. Get a good feeling about this one. [NOTE: Don't trust the center labels, these play at 33 not 45].

JUST BLACK “CAN’T PUT MY FINGER ON IT” CS (SILK035)

Smooth is the groove with Just Black. These deep house pulse-progressions hump n’ pump the body right. Six tracks of now and how, for slow burners, all-nighters, jam vamps, sleek seekers, jackin’ jills and running men, stitched together by the slinky Sir Stephen.

COYOTE CLEAN UP “FROZEN SOLID” CS (SILK027)

Coyote Clean Up aka Ice Cold Chrissy went to the same high school as Madonna but Frozen Solid goes eons further into glam-mo sensuality mesh/mash-up, fashion apocalypse humor, and Midwest wind-chill dream grime. CCU’s got old style for the new world, fresh and frozen for all you future freaks.

OCTO OCTA “ROUGH, RUGGED, AND RAW” CS (SILK025)

First in the SILK DJ Cassette Series, limited edition of 200, hot for tour. 35 minutes of previously unreleased Octo Octa tracks, mixed together for a smooth, creamy flow. 100% MILK. These bootlegs were made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do.

ROLAND TINGS “MILKY WAY” 12″ (SILK024)

Roland Tings is Rohan Newman, a Melbourne producer who, like recent rubies Holy Balm, Forces, and Canyons, proves there’s more and more greatness behind the great and powerful Oz. Melodic acid doused over rubber basslines, like a bouncy ball in a space chamber, effervescent and buoyant, cut with echo-plexed percussion and touches of Trax magic. More please.

OCTO OCTA “OH LOVE” 12″ (SILK023)

Burning deeper and yearning harder than his first SILK outing, Let Me See You, Oh Love projects dreams that can’t be followed, love that can’t last, futures that won’t solve the present. The dancefloor dissolves into warm and womby atmospheres, tear-jerk body-works, poised for poignancy.

MI AMI “DECADE” CD/LP (SILK020)

The transformative duo of Damon “Magic Touch” Palermo and Daniel “Ital” Martin-McCormick have created a hardcore soft-serve swirl of afro-punk, disco-dance freakout, and primitive techno along their half-decade journey toward Decade’s fine exploratory house. The yin of Damon’s deep focus rhythm, an endless horizon-riding beat, powers the yang of Daniel’s DC anarchic tension. “Time Of Love” is soul on the move: cymbal-crash symbolism, flanger fingerplay, drum roll triggers. “Free Of Life” shoots across reverbed pad stabs and synth-shred sweeps, before giving way to the final cut, “Bells,” a kiss of guitar shrapnel, walls closing in, beats pumping into the tree of life. Decade is a chemistry test, a steady study, a link of love. Ten-fingers-to-touch-you sleeve art by the one and only Bobby Houlihan. My friends: MI AMI.

POLONAISE “TROCADERO” 12″ (SILK018)

Scott Goodwin has pursued diligent electronics as Bonus and live-band techno as Operative but when teamed up with Avalon Kalin, aka Finesse, as the duo Polonaise they’ve uncovered a vibrant new patch of analog piano trance. Named in honor of the famed San Francisco den of disco oblivion, Trocadero sucks you into its fluid analog spectacle, mechanized and mesmerizing.

BOBBY BROWSER “JUST BROWSING” 12″ (SILK017)

Bay Area whiz kid Andre Ferreira aka Bobby Browser makes PeopleMover music: refined glides, dewy bass, escalator acid, sunny techno. Spot him around town biking over the Bay Bridge with a 909 in his knapsack or grabbing organic produce alongside some Berkeley techno vegans. A Man Of The People, primed for all your Uplift Mo’ Blow Party Plans. Just Browsing? Just Buying.

SFV ACID “GROWN” 12″ (SILK016)

Like the midnight warm-up at an ’83 Journey bash, the empty squelch of SFV Acid is at its tab-on-tongue-in-cheek acid-burning best when you don’t stop believing. These are midsummer night dreams of homegrown arcade grooves, sci-fi FX over luscious piano leisure, alien versus elation, Robo-copiousness. Driving up a wide boulevard in the San Fernando Valley never felt like this.

MALVOEAUX “BROKEN ANTHEM” 12″ (SILK015)

Jason Letkiewicz (Steve Summers, Innergaze, Rhythm Based Lovers) brings his broken but banging magic to all his monikers, whether cutting loose at an outdoor rave pleasuredome, a gritty abandoned department store in Hollywood, or an 800-capacity warehouse in the bowels of Bushwick. With his debut Malvoeaux outing on SILK he channels the slaying French filter-house like you can only find in the most off-the-chain clubs in Western Europe (or certain corners of the internet). FX-jacked, revved-out disco edits to get your mind’s night in full swing.

PEAKING LIGHTS “936 REMIXED” 12″ (SILK014)

Ponies from the SILK stable transform 936 on this remix redux. From the chic metallic vocal pitch n’ bounce of Ital’s take on “Marshmellow Yellow” to Xander Harris’ giallo-reggae revision of “Birds of Paradise” to Innergaze’s minimal wave “All The Sun That Shines” and Cuticle’s hi-hat space jam conversion of “Tiger Eyes,” this is even beater than the real thing. Let the Domino fall; 936‘s gone nightlife.

100% SILK 2011 TOUR T-SHIRT

We danced on water so you didn’t have to. Get the shirt and fool them all. Looking good is a breeze. On American Apparel tees.

PHARAOHS “UHH UHH” 12″ (SILK012)

Mad Madchester vibes all over Pharaohs debut Uhh Uhh, happy mondays, tuesdays and wednesdays full of synthetic drums, funky 808, pitch-shifted vocals, freaky dancing, baggy world party heaven. Add a bit of bubbly acid, some extended jazz grooves, a dash of KLF big band UK mayhem, and a touch of 94.7 FM liquid sax/velvet breath and you’ve got the deep pleasure of these LA kings can conjure. Taking the shiny dance floor to the warehouse cement, then out on to the sandy patio floor for some hot Hacienda nights.

OCTO OCTA “LET ME SEE YOU” 12″ (SILK011)

“Tryin’ to let it go” is the theme at hand: yearnin’ to earn it. Rhythm is feeling, especially when feelings are feeling bad. A 12″ can be therapy, cutting through the pain. Docto Octa is in, checking the pulse, charging by the half hour, recalling past lives when the ball dropped, glittering with glitter, standing in a room full of strangers and lovers, life and loves fading into fog. And the DJ played on.

ITAL “ONLY FOR TONIGHT” 12″ (SILK010)

Dancing in the light of a miracle, a love song from an era gone, “Only For Tonight” is a tawdry affair with rhythm, noise, and soul. And if rhythm is a dancer then Ital is her choreographer, hands on her hips and showing the way. Twelve inches of time running out; you’ve got this night with Ital but will you love him tomorrow? Lovers don’t just rock, they let their bodies talk, but only for tonight.

MAGIC TOUCH “I CAN FEEL THE HEAT” 12″ (SILK009)

Groove into Magic Touch’s pleasure factory, a floor-to-ceiling inventory of disco-covalence, guitar rush, even-better-than-the-real-thing samples, and jumpin’ jackin’ flash. A vice is nice but pills will never thrill you like the sensation of Magic Touch, his feverish fantasia of sweet heat. “I Can Feel The Heat” features additional shredding by So-Cal amigo Josh Anzano while “Clubhouse” stars additional instrumentation by Miracle Clubber Honey Owens.

INNERGAZE “SHADOW DISCO” 12″ (SILK008)

Innergaze your innerself – a Ror-shock of broken dreams and disco balls, cracked make-up mirrors of lipstick stains and smears, and Tom Collins highballs spilled on the tile. Innergaze makes dance music to lurch around to at 3 a.m., when the dry ice is dried out and you can’t find your fur coat. There’s taking candy from a baby and then there’s taking candy-colored cocktails from a stranger who’s dosed you with Innergaze’s bump and fuzz and slo-mo vocoderisms. For writhing on a cold white leather couch in an air-conditioned club. Strictly ballroom, strictly Freudian, and strictly speaking from the Innergaze Shadow Disco: Are you my mother, lover?

SIR STEPHEN “BY DESIGN” 12″ (SILK007)

Catwalk calls from a Creole Camelot; Sir Stephen’s more Boy London than Boy Bayou. Like the well-lit fitting room of a United Colors of Benetton store in Milan, By Design is consumer-cool counter counterculture – if the counter’s a denim bar that only takes gold Amex. Like the pool on the roof of a luxury hotel in Tokyo, By Design is Starck-er than stark, wetter than wild, and deeper in the shallow end. It’s so down it’s beat, so afterhours it’s early afternoon, so oversized there’s room for two. Made by design with the finest materials – rayon and on, cashmere and cream, and 100% silky Silk.

Italians may do it better (ice cream, genuine leather, synth splatter) but everything’s still bigger in Texas. Like this X-Large redux from Austin’s X-ander Harris. He calls side A the “high heels remix” and it sounds like a cosmic navigator who’s recently returned to Earth only to realize he’s left his generation behind, it’s closing in on 2012, and everyone he loves has aged and moved on without him. If Xander Harris had a hammer, he’d beat down John Carpenter’s door, turn Carpenteria into a Danceteria, and make that grave-waver Sweatt. Finally, an escape from New York.

GILLETTE 12″ (SILK005)

Gillette are a monorail through black-lit airbrushed metropolis cityscapes, liquid metalheads and bladerunners bargaining in back alleys for stolen hardware. Dying yet eternal, scenic but bleak, formless though fated. Remote with control. Kraft work for the machines of men.

MARIA MINERVA “NOBLE SAVAGE” 12″ (SILK004)

Bedroom dance from the London flat of Estonian goddess – and self-professed “hippy chick” – Maria Minerva. The A side touches on tribal trance, hacker boy beats, looped love, and the atmospheric long walks down dark dawn hallways. But the hit is “Disko Bliss,” where Maria’s brand of cracked-mirror disco could chill out Donna’s hottest summer. If Blondie was bizarrer, if Madonna’s raver bedtime stories actually went deeper and deeper, you’d have the beginnings of the world of Ms. Minerva. But would she have you?

CUTICLE “CONFECTIONER BEATS” 12″ (SILK003)

Misunderstood during their time together by an Iowa City that couldn’t feel the computer-generated heart beating as one, Cuticle make the music of the matrix, jacked through the green grids of tron city. Blue pills of lazer tag, Strange Days steady cams, morphing synths, circuit rupture, cyber-symphonic warps. If neon lovers glow in the dark then Cuticle can be seen radiating for miles. From the finger-less gloves of Daren Ho (Driphouse), Brendan O’Keefe (Nimby), and Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell): a three-dimensional systems preference sound show.

THE DEEEP “MUDDY TRACKS” 12″ (SILK002)

The Deeep’s Muddy Tracks is the kind of Toronto shamanism you never knew existed: like someone pulled the stinger out of Beth Gibbons and sucked the poison out of Tricky, leaving a stripped zombie trance-hop. The remixes fold in jubilant Indo-Eastern moves, for sophisticates only.

ITAL “ITAL’S THEME” 12″ (SILK001)

Hot and sticky humid DC nights. San Fran brotherly love bangers. You-Can-Have-It-All loftings in Brooklyn. Ital bounces between these like a mechanized conga beat, offering up the kind of cuts that make you move like the smoother, sweeter version of yrself. “Itals Theme” is magnetic; the cold open for a one night stand, the montage you’d set yr Thursday night to – back when Thursday night was Friday night and you had to get out of the house. “Queens” reverberates through the dance hall like a rubber ball, off one wall and onto the other, picking up sweat and steam on the way. “One Hit” sounds like the scaling of a skyscraper, higher and higher.